


Lament of The Son

by CorsairLord



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:40:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29659776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorsairLord/pseuds/CorsairLord
Summary: The life of an Astartes is duty and death, given and taken as the Emperor asks. To die for his people is the highest honor an Astartes could ever ask for.For those we cherish, we die in glory.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Lament of The Son

_The horde of Xenos was two hundred and thirty-seven meters and closing._

He realized it was coming when he saw his battle-brother Gallin not as the boisterous and hearty Badabian who had come to his Sergeant as but a boy of seven and outright demanded they take him to become an Astartes, but as the unbreakable and stern Primarch of the Imperial Fists Legion, Rogal Dorn. 

He had heard the warnings from the Chaplains and Librarians. To begin to experience their Father's last hours marked the descent into the Black Rage. This was to be his final battle, one way or the next. 

_Two hundred and twelve meters, fifteen meters bought with a pile of bodies._

On a world only recently named by the Captain of Fifth Company, for the role it would serve as the Lamenters used it to slow the ever-hungry advance of the accursed Tyranids of Kraken; Wavebreak. 

They had thought it uninhabited by humanity, but much to their horror, they were proven wrong. Beneath the ever present great jungle canopy, sprawling nation-states thrived on the bountiful quarry of the animals and insects and harvest of the great fruits that grew as large as a man's head from the tree branches. 

Nation-states who remembered the Emperor and his Imperium, who remembered his Angels, as they revered an archaic form of the Imperial Creed, and had ancient hololiths and picts depicting their ancestors arrival. 

An arrival shepherded by Astartes bearing the winged tear of blood that marked them as Sanguinius' Sons, evidently moving the last untainted refugees from a stellar cluster of heretics and xenos. 

The Lamenters knew then and there, that this was no mere chance of fortune, no. No this was destiny and fate writ large.

_One hundred and ninety-nine meters, paid for in blood._

They had begun the evacuation immediately, loading them by the dozens aboard whatever vehicles they could fit them into, eventually having them be carried inside Land Raiders and taken up in transport Thunderhawks. 

But the xenos, they came quickly. Far too quickly. 

And so it was a desperate offence was enacted, with a whole half of the Lamenters remaining companies driving deep into the beasts encroachment, to buy the others time.

It would be their death.

But that did not matter. 

They were created by Him, the Emperor for this. To protect His people, and be their sword and shield. 

They cherished the chance to fulfill their purpose, no matter the cost. 

And if the cost were to be his life, his sanity, to be made to relive the last moments of one better than himself, who gave everything and more to protect humanity? 

He would do so with a smile and a hope that he did his Father proud.

He no longer saw the Tyranids anymore. No, he saw the hated Sons of the Arch-Traitor, Horus. 

It was closer then. 

_The Traitors...Tyranids were closing at one hundred and seventy-six meters, uncaring for their fellows who fell to the unending bolted fire._

He chanced a look back at the few remaining humans that he and his squad had been protecting as the encroaching hordes had forced the Thunderhawk to leave before it was completely full, otherwise risking the loss of every soul on board. 

They had promised to return, with another of the gunships, to beat back the flying abominations the beasts had brought with them. 

He knew they would. 

Amongst the humans he saw a family huddled in a corner, young parents holding a bundle of blankets with their firstborn swaddled inside. 

When his squad had first come to the hamlet, the humans had been frightened-but when the elder of the village recognized the name inscribed on his battle-brother Corleoh's bolter, the village cried out in joy for the Angels of Sanguinius come again. 

The couple had brought their child with them to the Astartes, as most had done, to receive some form of blessing from these great beings they had long heard legends of. 

He remembered when they passed by him, and the babe had reached out and touched the aquilla on his chest, the only one to do so. 

He remembered looking down at the impossibly small thing, as it traced the Emperor's Aquila, babbling without meaning. 

But happy. 

That was what he fought for, he swore to himself. 

For the innocent and those who could not fight for themselves. 

He would not allow that innocence to be snuffed out this day, by creatures birthed by some dark malevolence too evil to have been natural. 

Not this day, he swore as he let loose another hail of bolter fire upon the horde, the distance between the encroaching xenos and the hasty fortifications they had erected growing smaller by the minute. 

_One hundred and thirty meters, still moving with a malicious urgency._

It was rage that began to fill him then. 

Something in his blood. 

He no longer saw the beasts as mere foul and cruel xenos, no he saw them as Traitors once Brothers, as corrupted and wholly base beings, ones unworthy of the name Astartes. And at their head, stood the vile and ruined Warmaster, the architect of all this misery and suffering. 

And at his feet lay the body of a man so righteous and brave, he had battled this monster without reservation, without respite, to save all those innocent and too weak he threatened. 

His Father. 

He who had been the greatest of them all, who loved his Legion and raised them up, who protected those who could not protect themselves, who suffered for them, for humanity, for the Emperor, for all who came before and would come after, who knew his doom yet came and met it willingly. 

And he was dead. 

Something broke in him then, as he howled his Father's name to the stars past the ceiling of leaves, as he leapt over the barrier they'd erected, and drew his Power Sword.

_Seventy meters left, enough to pile their corpses._

**He would slay them all**

**He would avenge his noble Father**

**He would protect those his Father protected**

**He would bring down the Arch-Traitor and cast his corpse into the Great Eye**

**He would follow afterwards and slay all those foul and petty gods that dared endanger humanity**

**He would not stop until the last enemy was destroyed**

**Or until he died**

**But for those he cherished, he would die in glory**

His brothers saw him lose himself in that moment, as he charged the Tyranids screaming the name of their Father. 

They saw him become death unleashed on the beasts, a murderous vengeance loosed on foes long since dead, imagined by a memory of a grieving son. 

He would not slow, as his blade became a vermillion whirlwind, as he let his bolter loose upon the mass of black plate, as he swung the heavy weapon like a club upon the jeering faces of the traitors. 

They stung at him with their foul swords and chemical weapons, but he did not feel anything save a burning hatred in his heart, a fire that only the lifeblood of Horus would extinguish.

He saw the Arch-Traitor always, his foot resting on his Father's chest. 

The monster would regret it, he swore as he slaughtered his way through the Terminator-clad Justaerin, barely pausing as one ripped his right arm off. 

It would not slow him.

_Ninety-five meters, gained through a brother's fall_. 

The Arch-Traitor met him, his accursed Talon's electric field sending sparks across his blade, now slick with gore and flickering. 

He held fast yet, and kicked the beast off of his Father, putting enough force into it to crack Horus' knee Armour. 

He stood over his Father then, his blade in hand, his foes closing in. 

As Horus struck him once more, cracking his chest plate and shattering his blade, he yet stood. 

He would not fail his Father. They would not have his body this day. They would not have those he cherished this day. 

He leapt at Horus then, the half a blade held aloft, as he roared his Father's name. 

He felt the Talon pierce his ceramite plate and his ribcage before he had reached the Warmaster. 

_One hundred and six meters, earned through a tragedy never forgotten nor forgiven._

And then he was not Brother Raell of the Lamenters Chapter, Third Company, Second Squad. 

As he bled upon the Primarch's Talon, he fell into the last and bleakest stage of the Black Rage. 

He was Sanguinius, Primarch of The Blood Angels Legion, Lord of Baal. 

And he knew he would die this day. 

As he looked at his brother's face, he mourned the man he had once been, and the man he could have been. 

He was dying already, as the Talon had pierced his hearts. 

But he yet still had a duty to do. 

He remembered every time his father's people had seen him, they called him Angel and Lord. They loved him. 

And he loved them for even with all their faults and failures, they were good at heart and possessed of bravery and compassion he had forever laboured to match. 

He knew he was destined to die this day, but if he slew the brother he once would have followed to the ends of the Immaterium, their father would yet live. 

Those he loved would not suffer all the woes he had seen Horus inflict on many before them, nor those he saw after them in his visions. 

He raised his spear then, and lifted himself further onto the Talon coming closer to his brother, before he brought down his spear upon his brother's own armour. He begged for his forgiveness as he did so.

It had struck true, as his brother fell back, dropping the Talon. 

He fell to the ground then and stared above the thousand burning ships of the Fleets, and at the stars through the Bridget's viewport.

All those who lived in the light of those stars would never need fear his brother. 

He smiled sadly then as he died.

_Five hundred meters, granted through a son's grief, a father's love and a hope for things that would never come to pass._

They would sing songs of this day until the stars themselves died, the Lamenters swore. 

A tale of a true son of Sanguinius, who saved his battle-brothers and those he had been made to protect with the ultimate sacrifice, who alone slew a Hive Tyrant and it's Tyrant Guard, sending the rest of the horde into a frenzied and uncoordinated retreat and assault.

In his last moments he bore a tenth of his Father's strength and power, utilizing the curse the sons of Sanguinius had suffered for a singular noble purpose. 

No Astartes could conceive of a better death. 

In life he protected those he cherished. 

In death he found glory and salvation from the rage he had suffered. 


End file.
